a case of the blues

Jeez. Lauer and Asher made the writing of acceptable case studies seem hopelessly complicated to perform so as to achieve some validity, and for me, Newkirk's narrative was a major downer. I mostly side with Newkirk's "tell stories anyway!" attitude, in part because I see a response to his "lame" (130) justification of focusing on one, possibly exceptional case.

Lauer and Asher identify case studies as a preparatory activity not attempting "to establish cause and effect relationships," but to help "the researcher to identify new variables and questions." They seem to discount their usefulness, but at the same time call for an almost wasted rigor through coding and statistical analysis of coding consistency. Newkirk points out that in his experience, positivist researchers use more experimentally designed research—not case studies—to choose hypothesis and questions. I got to wondering why we should go to all the trouble of improving the case study if it never attains credibility.

Although he doesn't spend too much time theorizing it, Newkirk does point out a light at the end of the tunnel. The superiority of experimental or more empirical research is somewhat refuted by Newkirk when he reminds us to make our subjects human and to remember that variables are "transacted" (131). I think that references to differentiation in pedagogy would be helpful to his case. If we use large-sample data about writers in general, we still must teach individual students. If a student seems to fit a case, we can possibly use that case study to help an individual student. The farther students deviate from the norm, the more we can maybe make a case for case studies. Researchers could try to create subgroups to research experimentally and then match students to their subgroups, but no group will ever represent an individual, and case studies are an efficient way to "read" our students.

I also agreed with less enthusiasm about Newkirk's position on the potential for case studies to find new approaches. Newkirk reasons that because case studies "draw their authority from … enduring narratives that writers borrow to shape their accounts," they are "profoundly conservative and conventional" (136). We will see things as we want to see them, and only as they have been "archetypally" seen before. To structure their narratives and suggest directions for practice, even reform-minded case study authors use deeply rooted cultural myths (true or untrue)--for example, the victim-victimizer relationship in the education of minorities (146-147). Unfortunately, his analysis of case study writers does little to validate the rhetorical claims they make. Newkirk reminds us to question the validity and bias of case studies while applauding the storytelling form for having its own form of realism.